


Truth or Dare

by enigmaticagentscully



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-12 02:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20556437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticagentscully/pseuds/enigmaticagentscully
Summary: “I already know you’re a good liar,” she said. “It might be interesting to see how you do with the truth.”A rainy afternoon, a terrible novel, a game, old wounds reopened





	Truth or Dare

The rain in the Philippines was _apocalyptic_; nothing could prepare you for it.

It was the flipside of the coin, Raquel supposed, the price you paid for living somewhere that looked like anyone’s vision of paradise all the year round. Rainy season was what allowed those long, sunny days and white sand beaches, the lush, verdant island jungle that teemed with life. A few months of every year, the sky dumped all its rain on the archipelago at once, in driving, relentless sheets.

Raquel didn’t mind so much. Paula found it frustrating not to be able to go and play outside, but she had started school in June and her classes and new friends took her out of the house for much of the day, which helped. Both Sergio and Paula herself had been wary of the very idea of school – what if Paula accidentally let slip some innocuous hint of who her mother was to the teachers? What if she didn’t fit in with the other kids? Wouldn’t it be better to teach her at home? – but Raquel had insisted. She didn’t want her daughter to become a recluse, treating their new life like some endless vacation; she should have options, a formal education if she needed it in the future. And it would be good for her to have some normality, some routine after her life had changed so much in such a short time. As Raquel had predicted, after a couple of weeks you couldn’t have dragged Paula away from school, and her open and talkative nature had made her several friends.

It made the house quieter during the days, and with her mother asleep and Sergio off in town visiting a friend, Raquel was looking at a long, peaceful afternoon to do with what she pleased.

She decided in the end to start the new book she’d picked up; reading novels had been an unexpected pleasure she’d rediscovered recently, long ago lost in her old life due to a chronic lack of free time. They had a couple of woven wicker chairs out on the veranda at the front of the house, set close to each other and turned so that they were touching; a peaceful place for late night conversation or reading quietly of an afternoon. On a fine day you also had a beautiful view of the ocean through the jungle, but today the driving rain obscured anything beyond the tree line. Still, Raquel found the sight soothing as much as inconvenient, and with no plans in particular today she had intended to spend her afternoon reading all the same.

Unfortunately her novel had turned out to be a disappointment, and it was with relief that she put it aside when Sergio strolled out and sat down in the chair next to her.

“I wouldn’t have disturbed you,” he said, “but you were making that face that means you were ready to throw the book away in disgust, and since it’s raining so hard out there I thought I’d try to save it from becoming mulch.”

Raquel laughed. “It’s better than it deserves, believe me.”

“That bad?”

“Let’s just say you can tell it was written by a man,” she said. “Not that I have anything against male writers, but this one really hits you over the head with it on every page.”

“Ah.”

They both stared out at the rain contemplatively for a long minute. “I’m surprised you’re still here,” said Raquel vaguely. “I thought you were going to visit your friend in town to play chess?”

“He called to cancel,” said Sergio. “Apparently he’s feeling unwell. Nothing serious.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I don’t suppose you wanted to play a game or two?”

Raquel wrinkled her nose, and Sergio chuckled in response. “Not your game, I know,” he said.

“I don’t _hate_ it,” said Raquel defensively. “I just never saw the point. It’s too...abstract. The goal is just to win, but _why?_ I prefer games that require more imagination.”

“I would say chess requires imagination,” said Sergio mildly. “You have to imagine what your opponent’s next moves might be.”

Raquel shrugged, neither contesting nor quite conceding the point. “I prefer poker,” she said. “Or games like that, which reveal something about the people you’re playing with. Where it’s as much about psychology as strategy.”

“Once a negotiator, always a negotiator, yes?” said Sergio, with a smile.

Raquel grinned. “Maybe you’re right. But it doesn’t have to be so serious or high-stakes. I also used to love those party games you play when you’re young and drunk, like...oh I don’t know, spin the bottle and truth-or-dare. You know, the ones the teenagers always play in American movies. The ones that always used to end with one friendship broken for a week and a new couple kissing in a dark corner for the rest of the evening.”

“That sounds very high-stakes to me,” said Sergio. “But I wouldn’t know. I was always in and out of hospitals for most of my adolescence, and even after that I didn’t have the skills to make friends easily. Let’s just say I wasn’t the sort who would get invited to the kinds of parties you were going to.” He grinned, a touch self consciously, clearly trying to take the edge off any self-pity that he might have revealed. “There was more likely to be chess than truth-or-dare at the gatherings I attended.”

“Well then we’ll have to play it now,” said Raquel lightly. She smiled as Sergio looked at her, obviously trying to work out how serious she was. “I already know you’re a good liar,” she said. “It might be interesting to see how you do with the truth.”

Sergio leaned forwards in his chair in a way that meant she had captured his interest. “Alright then,” he said, apparently unoffended by her assertion of his skill as a liar. “I’ll choose truth first.”

Raquel regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, and then suddenly grinned wickedly. “Where was the first time you made love?” she asked.

Sergio chuckled. “Is this payback then, Inspector?” he said. “Well, I’m afraid it isn’t as romantic as yours. It was in my bed in the flat I rented while I was a student, with a very nice girl who dumped me a week later because I was too focused on my studies.”

“Poor you.”

“I probably deserved it. Actually I was mostly relieved, I think.” He shrugged off her pity easily and gave her an expectant look. “Your turn, Inspector,” he said. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” said Raquel.

She must have put him in mind of their first conversations, because he didn’t hesitate before choosing a question. “How did you imagine the Professor, when you spoke to him?” he asked.

“Hmm. Tall, dark and handsome, I think,” said Raquel, a touch teasingly.

“Sorry to be a disappointment,” said Sergio, and Raquel rolled her eyes.

“Stop fishing for compliments,” she said. “You know you’re all of those things.”

She had the pleasure of seeing Sergio look genuinely embarrassed, if also obviously pleased, ducking his head slightly to grin bashfully at the ground, a sight so endearing she couldn’t help but lean over and kiss his cheek. When she settled back into her chair, he looked up and smiled ruefully.

“I’m afraid I had already had your picture pinned up on my wall for five months by the time we first spoke,” he said. “So I’m afraid I can’t return the compliment of a flattering mental image. I already knew you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”

Raquel smiled back, but she felt a strange tug of emotion deep in her chest that was not quite pleasure. The reminder of the calculated nature of the start of their relationship struck a jarring note; the knowledge that although the banter between the Professor and Inspector had been the start of it all for her, it had not been for him. The fact that he’d known what she looked like, her name, her whole history, before even speaking a word to her. That she’d been, at one time, nothing more than another name in a file, a picture on his notice-board, a human variable to be studied and analysed and manipulated.

Without thinking, Raquel said: “Did you know, when you made your plan, that you would sleep with me?”

She hadn’t really intended it as her next question, had not even truly meant to voice the thought out loud. But once she had, she realised she needed to know. Sergio stilled, the warmth in his eyes fading to an expression impossible to read. For a long moment, there was no sound but the steady swish of the rain.

“I think you’ve asked me this one already,” he said quietly. “Under more rigorous circumstances.”

“No,” said Raquel, suddenly finding it difficult to meet his gaze. She remembered; him handcuffed in the safehouse at the abandoned estate in Toledo, an interrogation of a very different kind. “I asked you whether that was the_ only_ reason you did it,” she said. “And you said it wasn’t. But I want to know...if it was always something you planned for, regardless of how you felt.”

Sergio reached out suddenly across the chairs and took her hand in his, an impulsive gesture. He squeezed it gently, and when Raquel brought herself to look at him again, his eyes were soft.

“_No_,” he said emphatically. “It wasn’t. I don’t have a lie detector with me Raquel, or I swear to you I would willingly strap myself into it, because it never for a single moment crossed my mind that you...that we...”

He looked so distressed that Raquel suddenly felt bad for asking. “Okay,” she said. She squeezed his hand gently in return, reassuringly. “Okay, I believe you. I just wanted to know. I’m sorry.”

Sergio shook his head. “No, no I’m the one who should be sorry. I hate to think that I ever made you doubt that, even for a second.” He let out a heavy breath, obviously trying to choose his words with care. “I intended to get close to you, yes,” he said. “To be a sympathetic ear, a friend, an outsider you could confide in, to try and keep track of how the case was going. But I never anticipated more than that. The rest was...” He smiled, a little self consciously. “..._wonderful._ But unexpected. Incredible, even. Raquel, I had never imagined for a moment that you would _want_ me.”

Raquel couldn’t help but smile a little too at that. “Is it really so hard to imagine?” she said.

“For me, yes,” said Sergio earnestly. “That the beautiful, brilliant, remarkable woman I had been studying for months would have any interest in me at all was very hard to believe.” He swallowed hard, his eyes searching hers. “The truth...” he said, “the truth is that I slept with you because I wanted to. Very, _very_ badly. There’s no more or less to it than that. I was utterly infatuated with you and I wasn’t strong enough to resist the temptation. I wasn’t thinking of the plan, or anything like that.” He hesitated for a moment, gazing at her intently. “Actually I don’t think I was thinking at all,” he said, his voice a little lower, threaded with the tangible memory of desire.

Raquel felt her pulse quicken. Sergio still had her hand in his, and his thumb was stroking her skin softly in an extremely distracting way. She could still remember vividly the frantic passion of that first night; the way they had hardly been able to stop kissing long enough to tear each other’s clothes off, the way every touch had seemed_ electric_, sparks igniting under her skin and setting her alight from the inside, the way their bodies had come together so perfectly it felt as though they were made only for this. The way every doubt had been overwhelmed by the reckless desire simply to _feel_, to escape the real world and lose herself in the arms of another.

Raquel moistened her suddenly dry lips with her tongue. “Truth,” she said.

“What?” said Sergio absently.

“Truth,” she repeated. “It’s my turn.”

“Oh.” He visibly gathered himself from whatever pleasurable reminiscence of their first night together he had been sinking into, and asked, apparently sincerely:

“Why did _you _sleep with _me?_”

Raquel let out a breath of laughter. “Sergio! Why do you _think?_” she said, torn between exasperation and amusement.

He just shrugged, smiling.

“Because I was lonely and horny and it had been a _really _long time, and I was falling hard for you,” Raquel said succinctly. “In short: because I wanted to. Your turn.”

“Truth,” said Sergio promptly. His eyes were intent now, never leaving her own, and Raquel could taste the simmer of tension in the air between them, the game having turned into something more than it had been, the reminders of their shared past slipping through, making this feel something more of a confessional. She felt the kind of knife-edge pressure familiar from when she’d talked to the Professor for the first time; the give and take of banter edged with veiled purpose, analysing every word for meaning.

She_ liked_ it. In some perverse way, she had missed it. The world narrowed down to just the two of them, getting inside each other’s heads. There had always been a kind of intimacy to it, even from the start, a palpable connection that was as strong as any physical attraction.

Raquel tilted her head to the side, her whole body thrumming with anticipation, of what she couldn’t exactly have said. “At what point did you fuck up your perfect plan by falling in love with me?” she asked.

“When you made that crack about the President,” said Sergio.

Raquel raised her eyebrows. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“The first time we spoke when you were brought into the case. I told you I wanted to speak to someone who had the authority to make their own decisions, and you told me I should speak to the President, but since he was busy, I’d have to make do with you.”

“I’d forgotten that,” said Raquel. “That’s ridiculous, you couldn’t possibly have been in love with me then. You barely knew me.”

“I knew everything about you and nothing about you,” said Sergio softly. “I’d studied every detail of your career and your life until I was sure I knew _exactly _what you’d be like when I spoke to you...and then you still took me by surprise. From the moment I started talking to you, I was in love with you. I just didn’t know it yet.”

“Then when did you _know?_” Raquel asked curiously.

Sergio hesitated, and then smiled. “I think it’s my turn to ask now, isn’t it?” he said.

Raquel stared at him, surprised that he was still committed to keeping up the pretence of the game. “Alright,” she said slowly. “Truth.”

“When you found the coordinates I left you, did you think of turning me in to the authorities?”

“No,” said Raquel. “Not for a moment.” She stared, a touch defiantly, at his searching expression, and then said: “Your turn. When did you _know_ you had fallen in love with me?”

There was a long pause. “Dare,” said Sergio.

“What?”

“That’s the game isn’t it? I can choose either. This turn I choose dare.”

Raquel stared at him, torn between amusement and frustration. “Alright,” she said briskly. “I dare you to...go and stand out in the rain for one minute.”

They both turned and stared out at the deluge. It had not even slightly let up since they’d started their game – you could barely see a few metres past the end of the veranda.

Slowly, Sergio stood up. The, without a trace of hesitation, he walked out.

Raquel watched as he came to a stop in the open and turned to face her, the rain already plastering his clothes to his body and his hair to his head. She could just about see him counting under his breath, marking time – his wristwatch would be unreadable in this. After about ten seconds Raquel started to feel guilty, and after half a minute she was almost doubled over with laughter at the sight of him stoically standing there. By the time Sergio walked slowly back under the veranda, dripping all over the floor, she had dashed inside to grab the biggest towel she could find, and met him by wrapping it around his shoulders, still shaking with suppressed laughter.

“You idiot,” she said. “You could have just answered the damn question.”

Sergio sighed. “My glasses have fogged over,” he said glumly, taking them off and peering at them.

Raquel watched him fondly. “You’re adorable sometimes, you know that?” she said. She pushed the wet hair away from his brow and clasped his face in her hands, drawing him down to kiss him firmly on the mouth. One kiss melted into another, and another, and when they finally broke apart they were both breathing rather heavily. Raquel’s hands were braced on Sergio’s chest, and she ran them idly over his shoulders, looking appreciatively at the way his soaked shirt was clinging to his torso.

“Let’s get you out of those wet clothes, hmm?” she said, her voice soft and inviting.

Sergio smiled. He was still holding his glasses loosely in one hand; the other was resting on her waist, caressing her idly, his touch warm through the thin cotton of her dress. He was making her slightly damp too, but Raquel didn’t much care.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes that sounds like a very good idea.”

* * *

The rain slackened a little as the afternoon wore on, the relentless drumming against the roof softening to something more soothing, slowly calming with the gentle slide of day into evening. The soft expanse of their bed, where they lay naked and entwined, felt like a peaceful raft on an ocean of white noise, their own personal oasis. At times like this, it was easy to forget the world outside it existed at all.

Sergio lay on his back with Raquel sprawled out against his side, her head pillowed on his shoulder, lulled by the sound of the rain and blissfully relaxed in a way that only really _good _sex could accomplish. He was stroking her back idly, running his hand gently up and down her bare skin. Raquel had her own hand resting on his bare chest, over his heart, feeling the soft, steady beat of it.

_Little alterations in heart rate...blood pressure...breathing..._she thought vaguely. _My very own lie detector._ It was a fleeting thought, a little absurdity, but it reminded her again of the villa in Toledo. It reminded her of pulling open his shirt with hands that she couldn’t stop from trembling, pressing the little pads to his bare chest, pretending she didn’t see the way he swallowed hard when her fingers brushed his skin.

_The only thing I know for sure about you is that you’re a professional liar. You’re not going to lie to me again._

Raquel raised her head a little off his shoulder. “You never answered my question,” she said.

Sergio’s breathing didn’t change, but his hand stilled on her back. “No, I didn’t,” he said.

Raquel kissed his cheek softly. “Will you tell me?” she asked quietly. “Please, Sergio?”

There was a pause, and then he turned in bed so that he too was resting on his side, manoeuvring their embrace so that they were facing each other, so that he could see her properly. His eyes searched hers for a long moment, and then he nodded.

“It was that first night we spent together at your house,” he said. “When you fell asleep next to me on the bed. Almost like we are now.” He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her face. His eyes were dark and serious. “That’s when I realised that I had fallen in love with you,” he said. “That the way I felt about you was like nothing I had ever felt before. I realised that the heist I had been planning for half of my life meant less to me than the woman I had known for a few days. That I wasn’t thinking of the plan anymore, not when I was with you.”

Raquel smiled and touched his cheek gently, instinctively trying to soothe away the grave expression on his face. “Why on earth didn’t you want to tell me that?” she asked.

“Because I’m ashamed of what I did next,” Sergio said. “I let it go on, Raquel. Even though I knew I was hurting you, even though I knew it had to end, and that it could only end badly. I couldn’t give you up. I still asked you to go away with me, even knowing it would mean—”

Finally Raquel understood. “Lying to me,” she said. “It would have meant lying to me for the rest of our lives.”

His silence spoke for itself. And Raquel felt, suddenly, as if some deep and private wound had been brought to the surface, perhaps something Sergio himself had not even been aware of having held onto all this time. She remembers again the villa in Toledo, the agony in his eyes that had seemed at the time so irrelevant in the face of her own pain. _I’m so sorry, Raquel._

She withdrew her hand gently from his face. “You _didn’t_,” she said, thinking that this was the strangest pillow talk she had ever had. “I’m not here with you now under any false pretence, Sergio. You told me the truth.”

“At the point of a gun,” he said despairingly. “If you hadn’t discovered who I was on your own...”

“You would have told me,” said Raquel.

“I’m not sure,” he said quietly.

“I am,” Raquel said. “I’m_ sure_, Sergio. I may not know you as well as you knew me after months of research and having my picture on your wall like some kind of creepy serial killer” – she chuckled at Sergio’s reluctant smile – “but I know what kind of man you are. You wouldn’t have let me live out a lie forever, not even knowing your real name. If I had found you after everything happened, still not knowing who you were...you would have told me. I’ll bet you would have had a dozen different escape routes planned if it went badly, but you would have told me. I’m sure of that.”

She leaned over and kissed him tenderly on the mouth, the lightest brush of her lips against his. When she drew back, she was relieved to see the worried crease between his eyes had softened somewhat. His obvious relief at her words sent a little pang of emotion through Raquel’s chest – it had never occurred to her that, just as she sometimes found the start of their relationship difficult to reconcile with what they had now, Sergio might have his own uncertainties. That he might still feel guilt over what he had done to her, or _almost_ done, over the choices he’d made...the whole messy business of reconciling his head with his heart, of understanding the human cost of his perfect plan, the plan where Raquel was only ever meant to be collateral damage.

As if she would be here with him now if she had not long since forgiven him for that. As if she would be here if she had any doubt at all.

“Do you want to know _my_ truth?” Raquel said. “I fell in love with you that night too. When you told me you’d cross the ocean with me, take my daughter and my mother too, just leave it all behind. That wasn’t a lie, was it?”

“No,” Sergio said softly.

“When you played the piano for me, when you teased me about liking you better with your glasses on, when you believed me about what Alberto did to me and told me you wanted to help, without any hesitation. Those things didn’t feel like lies. Were they?”

“No. No, of course not.”

Raquel smiled. “Nothing important was,” she said. “The things that made me fall for you were _real_, Sergio. But the truth is you still find it hard to imagine, don’t you? That I would want you. It’s easier to tell yourself that you tricked me somehow, that you don’t deserve this...because deep down you still see yourself as the one who never got invited to parties, who got dumped after a week, who doesn’t get to keep the girl or have the happy ending.”

_The one who lost his whole family, one by one,_ she thought. _The one whose father and brother both died for him, leaving him alone with nothing but his guilt._

She didn’t say it aloud; she didn’t need to. She could see it in his eyes. There was still a part of him that believed love always ended badly.

“I’m with you, Sergio,” Raquel said. “I _meant_ that. I didn’t say it lightly. And I’m not going anywhere.”

She put every ounce of truth into the words that she could, and at least in some part her sincerity must have come through, because she saw Sergio’s face change, the look in his eyes suddenly something raw and vulnerable and brilliant with emotion. Apparently unable to speak, he seized her face and kissed her, rolling over to pin her beneath him, fierce and possessive, claiming her mouth with his own. Raquel melted into his kiss, wrapping herself around him, desperately hoping that her body could say what she would never be able to put into words. She wanted to imprint it upon his skin, breathe it into his lungs_; you changed everything, you gave me back my life, myself, and I love you, not some carefully curated version of you, just you, only you, always you, I know who you are and who I am and we don’t ever have to be alone again..._

They broke apart, panting, Sergio looking down at her as though he was seeing her for the first time, cradling her face in his hands. Raquel ran her fingers soothingly through his hair, toying with the curling ends at the nape of his neck, still slightly damp from the rain.

“You have to trust me,” she breathed. “If I can believe, after everything that happened, that you love me, then you have to believe that I love you too.”

He kissed her again in response, slow and deep and unbearably tender. “I do,” he said. “I believe it, Raquel.”

She guided him down to rest against the pillows once more, tucking her head under his, nestling close, her body still wrapped around him as tightly as was possible. Sergio kissed her hair softly.

After a while he whispered: “Whose turn is it now?”

It took Raquel a moment to understand, but when she did she giggled faintly. “Mine, I think,” she said. “Dare.”

“Tired of the truth, Inspector?” asked Sergio, and she could hear the smile in his voice.

“Mmm, maybe you can have too much of a good thing,” said Raquel, and let her hand slowly start to wander over his body in a speculative kind of way, lightly trailing her fingers over his bare skin.

“Well?” she said, in a tone pitched to be as suggestive as possible. “What would you like me to do, Professor?”

Sergio made a soft noise of pleasure as she nuzzled the hollow of his throat. “I’ve been informed you like games that involve some imagination,” he said, his voice low and warm with promise. “I’m sure I can come up with something.”


End file.
